Prompt: Gawande thinks that his patient Lazaroff chose badly, not because he died so violently, but “because his choice ran against his deepest interests”; Lazaroff wanted to live, yet “life was not what we had to offer,”…
“We could offer only a chance of preserving minimal lower-body function for his brief remaining time—at a cost of severe violence to him and against extreme odds of a miserable death” (p. 215-216).
Gawande says that even though current “medical orthodoxy” says that doctors should do what their patients want, “there are still times—and they are more frequent than we readily admit—when a doctor has to steer patients to do what’s right for themselves” (p. 216).
(1) What does Gawande mean by this? Give examples from the text, or even offer your own examples of what this could mean.
(2) Why do you think he argues that “a good physician cannot simply stand aside when patients make bad or self-defeating decisions—decisions that go against their deepest goals” (p. 216)?
In your answer, explain what Gawande means by a patient’s “deepest interests”, and why this might be controversial.
(3) Drawing from Ezekiel Emanuel’s Four Models of the physician-patient relationship, what type of Model do you think Gawande is advocating for, and why? Do you agree or disagree with him on this, and why?
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